Page 21 - Studio International - September 1968

or so students from Paris. French people New Realism, figurative narrative, Kineticism, any who dared to make a move. They had
arrested under the same circumstances were Op Art etc.—put their talents at the disposal made an example, and all the petitions signed
freed within twenty-four hours. But in the of the rebellion. In the Beaux-Arts, dirty, de- with illustrious names only bolstered the
case of foreigners the government was de- cayed, where nothing seemed to have chang- Minister of the Interior's self-satisfaction.
termined to hit hard. There was a double ed since the days of Zola and teaching meth- Nevertheless, from the point of view of the
advantage in doing so. Having tried to ex- ods were thirty years behind the Bauhaus French government, this measure was sense-
plain the May rebellion and its violence as of 1920, a poster studio. Work was done on less. It strengthened the centrifugal move-
the result of a'mob' which came in from the huge tables and was carried out anonymously ment which threatened to deprive the Ecole
suburbs—an explanation which convinced on projects which were then put to general de Paris of its greatest talents. A new group
no one—they concocted another story. It was vote. Everyone carried a stick and there was of Parisian artists is now working in Italy.
all the fault of the foreigners. All they had to a guard on doors and stairways to keep out Bellocal, Ailland, Arroyo and many others
do was to isolate little groups of doubtful the 'Occident' movement. Transistors blared have settled in Milan, Bologna and Verona,
origin, in full view of the 'good French non-stop. People commented on the latest where the collectors are much more active
people' who were the opponents of disorder news, such as the attack on one of the best than in France and where one can earn a
and were now regrouped around General de printmakers of the Ecole de Paris, the Brazil- living by working in conjunction with design
Gaulle. Hence the daily series of arrests, in ian Piza, winner of the Bright prize at the firms (such as Garvina), who subsidize and
which the number of foreigners (including 1966 Venice Biennale. He had been picked adapt the work of young artists. At the same
several tourists who happened to be around) up by chance by the police on his way home time, the North-American institutions are
was systematically publicized. They aimed at and had been beaten up four times within a perfecting a very effective 'brain-drain' from
releasing the xenophobic feelings of the few hours. Latin America, which draws the best painters
middle class. The arrest of Le Parc and De- The activities of the 'ex-Ecole des Beaux- of Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela to New
marco fitted into this scheme very well. Arts' which for a few weeks became the York. The Guggenheim scholarships ($600
But their deportation had another advan- Popular Studio, allowed many painters to to $700 a month) are even distributed in
tage : that of intimidating and putting on take part in a collective movement from Paris. The French government looks bn with
their guard the Paris intelligentsia, who had which they might otherwise have felt ex- indifference. The most mediocre cultural team
mostly joined the May movement and cluded. These posters immediately found in Europe, which has been in power for ten
demonstrated their anti-Gaullist feelings. their way into factories and slum areas. years under Monsieur Malraux, has never
From the first days of the student revolt many But if the Ecole de Paris showed that it was succeeded in preparing a coherent pro-
artists converged on the Ecole des Beaux- very largely in sympathy with the May move- gramme of support for contemporary re-
Arts, which was 'occupied' by the students, ment (and this applies to writers too) it must search. And now, to the indifference and
and
and put their talents at the service of the be remembered that about 70 per cent. were ignorance of the regime are added
strikers. foreigners. Here too, by banishing Le Parc political persecution.
Artists from entirely different movements— the government was issuing a warning to Jean Clay

A weak man seeks out his enemy's weak more spectacular was the unmasking of the
spot. When there was no more to be gleaned art: 'Documenta art—instrument of oppres-
from the political field, the students' rebellion sion'.
turned to the arts. The German supporters of The difficulty of establishing this analogy
the movement obtained a hearing for them- between political and artistic trends was
selves for the first time in the open during the solved by ideological borrowing from the
press conference on the afternoon of the Left. The moderates argued from a socialist
opening of Documenta. The tactics used by standpoint, in particular against the corn-
the rebels to reduce art and politics to a com- merciality of such exhibitions as Documenta,
mon denominator were extremely simple. the Venice Biennale etc. They said that
They quickly conferred on art—defenceless Western democracy is a capitalist system
as it is—the highest insignia of the revolution : which needs the cultural 'affirmation' of art
it serves the 'Freedom of Man'. Thus the exhibitions. 'The propertied classes accumu-
relationship between the politics and the art late art as a capital investment and an object
of a country became an established fact. The for speculation. Artists become useful fools
more fascist the politics then appeared, the who supply a democratic alibi for a society

Richard Morphet is assistant keeper in the modern Charles Spencer, a frequent contributor to Studio
collection at the Tate Gallery. Before taking up this International and other art journals.
post in 1966 he worked in the Fine Arts Department
of the British Council. Dore Ashton, the American critic, is a regular con-
tributor to Studio International.
London commentaries are by Charles Harrison,
assistant editor of Studio International; Paul
Overy who reviews art for The Listener and is
currently working on a book on de Stijl. Michael
Blee, assistant editor of Data Systems, a monthly
magazine dealing with computer application, and